NY Prosecutor To Fund Rape Kit Testing Nationally; Includes Detroit
NEW YORK (WWJ/AP) -- Evidence from up to 70,000 rape cases nationwide will get long-awaited DNA testing, the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. announced Wednesday as he pledged funds to help eliminate a backlog that has long troubled authorities, victims and lawmakers.
Vance Jr. has pledged $35 million to help police and prosecutors test rape kits in cities, such as Detroit, where more than 11,000 untested kits were found in August of 2009 -- some of them over 30 years old.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy was at the announcement in New York and said she has been working tirelessly to find money to help with the backlog.
"Victims' lives sitting on a shelf," Worthy said. "We had no database, no resources, no help, no protocol, no money and we had a bankrupt city, as everybody knows. And a Wayne County executive who is my funding source, who felt that prosecuting these cases was a low-priority item that I shouldn't waste my time with."
Worthy said that 1,600 of the over 11,000 rapists went on to rape in 23 other states, including New York.
"Each day as we struggled for funds, the rape kits got older and older, and victims were denied justice yet another day, another week, another month, another year," Worthy said. "And the rapists kept on raping and committing other crimes."
The backlog is largely a factor of the $500-to-$1,000-per-kit cost of testing, but advocates feel it also signals that sex crimes haven't always been enforcement priorities.
"How can anyone turn their back on these victims, whether it happened on their watch or not?" Worthy said. "These are mothers, children, aunts, daughters, wives, sisters and I could go on. We literally had to beg and borrow. I flew all over this country asking anyone who would help us to help us."
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